23
2009
My View on ccTLD
Most of us have watched the video by the 3000 dollar a day domainer. One of the reasons I waited this long to post my views is because I really do not want to influence any one’s decision. However if you care to know what I personally think, then here it is.
Do I believe it is possible to make a lot of money from Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLD). The answer to this is a “yes” but with a caveat. ccTLD is not for everyone. They are usually more expensive to get into and are less forgiving of a mistake. You might be able to unload some bad .com regs on some other novice but it is usually much harder to do the same with ccTLD.
One of my readers asked me if I was attending the conference on ccTLD and I said “No” and he wanted to know why. I said “I am not interested”. He replied “but Rick says he is betting the farm on ccTLD”. I replied him “it is easier to bet the farm if you have more than one farm” lets face it most of us are no Rick Latona.
Growing up my mom often told me “When the rat goes to play in the rain with the lizard, long after the lizard is dry, the rat is still wet” The moral of this story is to ask yourself are you a rat or a lizard? Can you afford to stay wet for a long time (being wet in this story is a bad thing) . If things don’t pan out, how long can you survive the damage or will this bury your empire before you even start.
Some years ago during the time of Greatdomains of old. There was a very big fuss about .cc domains. When beauty.cc was reportedly sold for 1Million USD, we all went crazy. They claimed .cc was the new dotcom or more rightly put, the .com crown prince. What most people did not know was that the so called 1Million dollar sale was somewhat shady. It was more of a publicity stunt. I had registered Jot.cc My plan was to build it into a sort of live journal. The exact phrase I had in mind then was an “online diary”. This was the plan for Jot.cc if I did not sell it of course. Well I never sold it. I held this domain for 2 or 3 years and finally let it expire. It was a small price to pay for the lesson I learnt. I watched the popularity of .cc drop and within a short time it was nothing. However some people made some good sales at the time. Some people are still making good sales on .cc but the probability is statistically smaller.
In all this blah blah. I draw some exceptions. .us, .co.uk, and .de
I am one of the few that believe that .us will be popular in future but that future is really far away and that popularity is really for the one worders or strong generics. The type that sells this days for x,xxx
I have never really classified .co.uk and .de with other ccTLD because they already have a strong following and it is pretty strong.
One other problem you will face with ccTLD is language. Just because you can translate does not mean that is the right term for the people who will be searching for that product or service. This is the only example I can think of now so bear with me – ( I am a pet lover) When you say “Oh he is such a pussy” In England it means he is such a darling, in America it means he is spineless and in most countries it will mean he is just a baby cat (kitten). I use this sentence because it is different from the example where Britain calls Truck Lorry and Hood Bonnet.
In summary ccTLD is not for everyone. I will revisit this topic in another post if need be. I am trying to keep my post short these days and this one is allready too long.
So what do you think? What are your views?
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Frankie,
This is a brilliant post. I enjoyed reading it.
Here in Britain, we also call the trunk (car) the boot. So if you hear the term, boot sale, it is not a sale of boots/shoes, but rather a sale of anything whatsoever from the trunk/boot of the car.
You are absolutely right – ccTLDs are not for everyone. You should also not treat TLDs like .cc, .tv or .fm like ccTLDs – technically they are but they really are more like .biz or .mobi domains.
If you want to invest in ccTLD you should do a research, a LOT of research. Probably maybe you will even have to recruit someone to have needed language skills on board.
You can also invest in some projects or companies that specialize in ccTLD markets and have the right knowledge to invest in ccTLD market.
But what is great about ccTLDs is that there is much less competition and rewards are also much higher – if you have enough knowledge, luck and money..
No risk, no fun
Nice post.
I would say that most of us domainer folks could find $500 to throw at experimenting with some ccTLD’s and if it does not work out….then so be it.
.
@Kevin I know about all the boot and trunk thing. Don’t get me started on color and colour
@Daniel Fine talk I must say. You are right .Tv, .cc, .ws even though they are technically ccTLD have been over diluted.
@Johnny with the economy, I have stopped throwing money at anything. I try to make every money decision count.
“pussy” in England means the same as in the US. It does not mean “darling”. No way. If you call someone a pussy here you’re likely to get a punch in the face. Don’t forget, we watch a lot of American TV!
Nick,
by singling out just one word from the entie sentence, you throw my analogy out of wack.
That sentence was actually curlled from a HBO series “Curb your enthusiasm”
so I believe the writers knew what they where saying.
Um, I think you miss the point of our exchange. My point in mentioning Rick’s conference was to demonstrate that many of the smart, most credible and most monied individuals in the industry recognize the value of ccTLD’s. It’s a fact that the average domain per user in the US is about .38 compared to about .16 for .co.uk and even half that for .cn and .in domains where most of the world’s internet users are. I think your misstep from your story above was registering English names. I mean, would you go out and register stekare.us (preppy in Swedish). I would hope not – how many people speak Swedish in the US? Unfortunately, most Americans fail to recognize that the world is larger than the shores of the US. I’m quite happy with most people sharing your sentiments because it makes it a buyer’s market for the next several years. Sadly, I think 9 out of 10 American domainers probably glean things the way you do…